An Evening with Richard Edlund at The Fargo Theatre

March 22 @ 7:00 pm

Richard Edlund (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark) to receive Fargo Film Festival’s highest honor

The Fargo Film Festival is proud to announce Richard Edlund as the 2019 recipient of the Ted M. Larson Award. Given in recognition of an outstanding career in film production, film preservation, and/or film education, the Ted M. Larson Award is the festival’s highest honor. Mr. Edlund will receive the award during the session An Evening with Richard Edlund, a live, on-stage conversation about his remarkable life, career, and artistic achievements that will take place on Friday, March 22, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. at the historic Fargo Theatre.

Richard Edlund, ASC

Edlund was born in Fargo, North Dakota. After a Naval tour, USC Film School brought him to Los Angeles. In 1975, fellow VFX enthusiast John Dykstra assembled the team for a startup called Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Edlund was one of the first to join the group, whose mission was to go where no filmmaker had gone before – with visual effects for a movie called Star Wars . When the new technology clicked, Edlund moved to Marin County to supervise visual effects for the next two episodes of Star Wars, as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Poltergeist .

Looking for an even greater challenge, Edlund returned to Los Angeles, where his company Boss Films became a star in the visual effects world. Boss’s pioneering VFX technology went on to create stunning imagery for over 40 features, including Ghostbusters , Die Hard , Ghost, Poltergeist 2, Alien 3, Species, Multiplicity, Air Force One, Cliffhanger , Batman Returns , Starship Troopers and many other high-profile projects. The company achieved ten Academy Award nominations over a 14-year period.

Edlund is a four-time Academy Award visual effects winner – for Star Wars , The Empire Strikes Back , Raiders of the Lost Ark , and Return of the Jedi , and was nominated for Poltergeist , 2010, Ghostbusters, Poltergeist II: The Other Side , Die Hard, and Alien 3 . He’s won three Academy Technical Awards and British Academy Awards for Poltergeist and Return of the Jedi .

He earned an Emmy for creating the visual effects for the original television miniseries Battlestar Galactica and received another nomination for Mike Nichols’ Angels in America . The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored him with their John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation in recognition of his contributions to the Academy. The ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) presented him with their esteemed Presidents Award in 2008. He has also received top accolades from the Visual Effects Society, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, and numerous other organizations.

Tickets for An Evening with Richard Edlund go on sale at 4:00pm on Monday, March 4 at the Fargo Theatre box office. General admission seating.